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Neil DeGrasse Tyson
(5 Oct 1958 - )
astrophysicist and science promoter who is recognized for his work bringing an understanding of science to the layman through appearances on TV and radio.
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Science Quotes by Neil DeGrasse Tyson (15 quotes)
Does it mean, if you don’t understand something, and the community of physicists don’t understand it, that means God did it? Is that how you want to play this game? Because if it is, here’s a list of the things in the past that the physicists—at the time—didn’t understand … [but now we do understand.] If that’s how you want to invoke your evidence for God, then God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance, that’s getting smaller and smaller and smaller, as time moves on. So just be ready for that to happen, if that’s how you want to come at the problem. That’s simply the “God of the Gaps” argument that’s been around for ever.
— Neil DeGrasse Tyson
From interview, The Science Studio video series of The Science Network website, episode 'The Moon, the Tides and why Neil DeGrasse Tyson is Colbert’s God' (20 Jan 2011), time 26:58-27:55.
Each discovery of science … adds a rung to a ladder of knowledge whose end is not in sight because we are building the ladder as we go along. As far as I can tell, as we assemble and ascend this ladder, we will forever uncover the secrets of the universe—one by one.
— Neil DeGrasse Tyson
In magazine article, 'The Beginning of Science', Natural History (Mar 2001). Collected in Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries (2007), 20.
Equipped with our five senses, along with telescopes and microscopes and mass spectrometers and seismographs and magnetometers and particle accelerators and detectors across the electromagnetic spectrum, we explore the universe around us and call the adventure science.
— Neil DeGrasse Tyson
In magazine article, 'Coming to our Senses', Natural History Magazine (Mar 2001). Collected in Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries (2007), 28. This is Tyson’s respectful update of a quote by Edwin P. Hubble in 1954: “Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure science.” (See Science Quotations by Edwin Hubble.)
Humans ... would not exist but for the wreckage of spent stars. So you're made of detritus [from exploded stars]. Get over it. Or better yet, celebrate it. After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?
— Neil DeGrasse Tyson
In Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries (2007), 222.
I [do not know] when the end of science will come. ... What I do know is that our species is dumber than we normally admit to ourselves. This limit of our mental faculties, and not necessarily of science itself, ensures to me that we have only just begun to figure out the universe.
— Neil DeGrasse Tyson
In Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries (2007), 17.
I would request that my body in death be buried, not cremated so that the energy content contained within in gets returned to the earth, so that flora and fauna can dine upon it just as I’ve dined upon flora and fauna throughout my life.
— Neil DeGrasse Tyson
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Knowing how things work is important, but I think that’s an incomplete view of what science literacy is or, at least, should be. Science literacy is an outlook. It’s more of a lens through which you observe what goes on around you.
— Neil DeGrasse Tyson
From interview with interview with Marina Leight, 'Global Ideas from Pluto's Challenger', Converge Magazine (21 May 2009).
Not enough of our society is trained how to understand and interpret quantitative information. This activity is a centerpiece of science literacy to which we should all strive—the future health, wealth, and security of our democracy depend on it. Until that is achieved, we are at risk of making under-informed decisions that affect ourselves, our communities, our country, and even the world.
— Neil DeGrasse Tyson
From email message, as published on Huffington Post website (5 Feb 2015).
One of the great challenges in this world is knowing enough about a subject to think you’re right, but not enough about the subject to know you’re wrong.
— Neil DeGrasse Tyson
From video trailer, 'Neil deGrasse Tyson Teaches Scientific Thinking and Communication', Masterclass (19 Dec 2019)
One of the great triumphs of 20th Century astrophysics, was tracing the elements of your body, of all the elements around us, to the actions of stars—that crucible in the centers of stars that cooked basic elements into heavier elements, light elements into heavy elements. (I say “cooked”—I mean thermonuclear fusion.) The heat brings them together, gets you bigger atoms, that then do other interesting chemical things, fleshing out the contents of the Periodic Table.
— Neil DeGrasse Tyson
From interview, The Science Studio video series of The Science Network website, episode 'The Moon, the Tides and why Neil DeGrasse Tyson is Colbert’s God' (20 Jan 2011), time 20:53-21:25.
Our eyes are special detectors. They allows us to register information not only from across the room but from across the universe.
— Neil DeGrasse Tyson
In magazine article, 'Coming to our Senses', Natural History Magazine (Mar 2001). Collected in Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries (2007), 25. This is Tyson’s respectful update of a quote by Edwin P. Hubble in 1954: “Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure science.” (See Science Quotations by Edwin Hubble.)
Recognize that the very molecules that make up your body, the atoms that construct the molecules, are traceable to the crucibles that were once the centers of high mass stars that exploded their chemically rich guts into the galaxy, enriching pristine gas clouds with the chemistry of life. So that we are all connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically. That’s kinda cool! That makes me smile and I actually feel quite large at the end of that. It’s not that we are better than the universe, we are part of the universe. We are in the universe and the universe is in us.
— Neil DeGrasse Tyson
From a History Channel TV show, (?) The Universe.
Scientific literacy is an intellectual vaccine against the claims of charlatans who would exploit ignorance.
— Neil DeGrasse Tyson
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The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.
— Neil DeGrasse Tyson
Catchphrase used in various broadcast interviews, for example, Real Time with Bill Maher (4 Feb 2011).
While natural selection drives Darwinian evolution, the growth of human culture is largely Lamarckian: new generations of humans inherit the acquired discoveries of generations past, enabling cosmic insight to grow slowly, but without limit.
— Neil DeGrasse Tyson
In magazine article, 'The Beginning of Science', Natural History (Mar 2001). Collected in Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries (2007), 20.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
